Tag: travel

Phone it in Friday XXXV: My Second Book is Live on Kindle!

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In case the daily reminders at the top of every post this week weren’t reminder enough, I’ve released my second book, Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Adventures.  It’s a collection of travel essays I’ve accumulated over the last four years, and it’s available now on Amazon.  The Kindle version went live today, so if you pre-ordered, you can now read the book!

I’ve been eager to release a second book ever since I published The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot back in March 2021, but various time constraints always seemed to interfere.  Ironically, maintaining the blog—even with help from good friends—is one such hinderance, while also serving as the source material for this book!

Blogging daily (today marks the 1545th consecutive day of blogging) is great fun, but it takes time.  Longtime readers will probably have noticed the increase in guest posts (especially from Audre Myers and Ponty), as well as lighter posts from yours portly.  Those lighter posts are partially out of necessity—in order to maintain my busy work and private music lessons schedule, I have to write some fluffier posts here from time to time.

No worries—I have not given up on political writing entirely, nor have I abandoned writing seriously about music, faith, art, etc.  Sometimes, I just need to upload some pictures of a LEGO set I built and call it a day.

That said, blogging daily is also the source of Arizonan Sojourn, as blogging daily will likely be the source of my next book (topic to be determined).  Pulled from four years of travel essays, with a particular focus on the six-part trip my older brother and I took to Arizona in December 2022, the book regales readers with tales of my not-so-outrageous exploits.

So, I found myself last week with a modicum of extra time because Middle School students were taking some horrendous standardized test, after which they were dismissed for the day.  That removed my duty to teach Middle Music Ensemble for a few days, and that extra fifty-six minutes each day, along with the lack of private music lessons with Middle Schoolers, enabled me to complete the compiling, organizing, and edition of Arizonan Sojourn.

Unlike Inspector Gerard, I also made sure to proofread and revise Arizonan Sojourn much more carefully this time.  I cannot guarantee it is free of grammatical errors—I found one as soon as I published the book (it is now fixed)—but it should be substantially less embarrassing in this regard than Gerard was.

That’s all to say that you should buy it.  I’ll also be uploading a PDF manuscript of the entire work to my Subscribe Star page for $5 and up subscribers tomorrow.

Of course, it’s much better to have a physical copy, no?

Here’s where you can pick it up:

Happy Reading!

—TPP

TBT: Inspector Gerard eBook is Coming 1 April 2021 (Out NOW in Paperback)!

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I released my first self-published book, The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot, two years ago.  Two years on, I have finally released my second book, Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Adventures.  It’s a collection of travel essays I’ve accumulated over the last four years, and it’s available now on Amazon.

Here’s where you can pick it up:

With the release of this new book, it seemed apropos to glance back at the release of Inspector Gerard, and all the excitement of yours portly at the time.

With that, here is 26 March 2021’s “Inspector Gerard eBook is Coming 1 April 2021 (Out NOW in Paperback)!“:

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Myrtle Beach 2023

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

In a time-honored tradition dating back to 2016—what glory days those were!—my older brother flew in from Indianapolis to run the Myrtle Beach Marathon.  He ran the marathon in 2016, and in subsequent years ran the half-marathon.  He was back in a big way in 2023, ready to conquer the race.

In the olden days, the whole family would make a weekend of it, but with my parents exhausted from our family trip to Disney World and my younger brother and his brood cash-strapped from the same, it ended up just being my brother and me (even his wife couldn’t make it!).

With our adventuring party thus reduced, my brother and I resolved to make the most of it—even in the midst of the gnarliest stench a Myrtle Beach condo could muster.

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Lazy Sunday CXCII: The Beach

The Portly Politico6 Comments

I’m returning today from a weekend in Myrtle Beach, where my older brother and I have been celebrating his participation in the Myrtle Beach Marathon.  We’ve stuffed ourselves with seafood, but he actually earned the right to eat all of that.

As such, it seemed like a good time to look back at some beachy posts of yesteryear:

Here’s to more beach trips in the future!

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Christmas Break Travels, Part VI: Home for Christmas

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Trapped in the blizzard in Indianapolis, pipes bursting across the land (including in my older brother’s house), there was little to do besides sleep and let the responsible adults take care of things.

There are few things more reassuringly cozy than sleeping under heavy blankets in sub-zero temperatures.  It’s akin to the feeling of being inside with power during a torrential downpour or powerful thunderstorm—the sense of safety and warmth is experienced palpably in those moments.  In some ways, it’s even better to get soaked first, then to come into the dryness of the indoors.

But sleep can only forestall reality for so long.  Driving to South Carolina on Friday, 23 December 2022 as I’d originally planned was out of the question, given the frozen roads.  Tales of major wrecks and traffic snarls echoed across the land, so it seemed best to stay put.

That said, I desperately wanted to get home for Christmas.  The weather, it seemed, had other plans, but I soon hatched a plan that, if all went well, would get me South in time for at least some of Christmas.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Christmas Break Travels, Part V: Snowbound

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

As my older brother and I enjoyed our visit to Arizona, a massive polar vortex was making its way ominously towards the United States.  We had some cool weather in Arizona, but reports were coming from back East that temperatures were dangerously low.  My brother and his wife live in Indianapolis, so they were facing subzero temperatures, but even back in South Carolina, family and friends were reporting busted pipes and bitterly cold conditions.

There was some discussion between us about whether or not we should extend our trip another day or two, but the lure of Christmas and family was strong.  We decided to head to the airport as planned to take our chances.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Star Wars Fans

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

One of the highlights of my family’s recent trip to Disney World was the large Star Wars area in Disney’s Hollywood Studios.  Disney may have wrecked the franchise with the sequel trilogy, but the silver lining of The Mouse’s acquisition is that fans can now walk around an area that looks like the films’ dingy alleys and byways.

They also hosted two incredible rides, one which allows flight crews of up to six to operate the Millennium Falcon as pilots, gunners, and engineers; and another immersive experience that sees riders taken captive by The First Order (for old fans, this organization takes the place of the Empire in the sequel trilogy).

This area also attracts a lot of Star Wars fan.  Observing their behavior in this grown-up fantasy world was quite interesting—and humorous.

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Lazy Sunday CLXXXIX: Arizonan Sojourn, Part I

The Portly Politico6 Comments

The week before Christmas 2022 my older brother and I flew out to Arizona for a few days of adventure.  My trip to Disney World derailed my Saturday posts for a couple of weekends, and I took a Saturday away from Arizonan reminiscences to do a (brief) rundown of that Disney excursion.

I should be back on the Christmas Break Travels train now, though, and I thought I’d look back at the first three SubscribeStar posts in the series.  Right now they’re subscriber-only posts, but I might collect these short, self-indulgent travelogues into a small eBook or the like with a catchy, misleading title:  My Erotic Desert Adventures or something (disclaimer:  there was nothing erotic about the trip. unless you count the lust I developed for massive burritos).

Regardless, here are the first three, detailing the trip to Indiana, then our first day in Arizona at the Grand Canyon, finishing off with finding my destiny in a Western wear store:

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Christmas Break Travels, Part IV: Scottsdale and The Whale (2022)

The Portly Politico14 Comments

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

After our trip to Grand Canyon National Park and Prescott, my brother and I indulged in a more leisurely start to our second day in Arizona.  His idea of leisure is a ten-mile run; while he did that, I walked further into downtown Phoenix to pick up some sundries at a local CVS.

Downtown Phoenix feels a great deal like most mid-major American cities:  some tall buildings, often with scaffolding; a few historic sites; and a general sense that public transportation is the preferred method of travel, even if everyone still drives.  There was also an ubiquitous homeless population, which makes sense:  why spend your winters in North Dakota if you don’t have shelter?

Like most mid-major American cities, Phoenix also had its commercialized outdoor shopping mall area, with the kinds of higher-end chain stores that one tends to see in more tourist-y areas.  This zone held the CVS, but it felt like a scaled-down version of City Walk at Universal Studios.  I picked up our vittles and stopped in at Bad Ass Coffee Company of Hawaii, which has apparently colonized the mainland, and picked up a beautiful souvenir tin for my mom (it did not featuring a braying jackass, but rather a woman in a sun hat tending to her coffee plants).

Resupplied and refreshed from our morning, we set out for Scottsdale, the tony, artistic suburb of Phoenix, for more Southwestern culture.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Disney Adventures

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

After two Saturdays of ripping off my subscribers with a lack of substantive content, I’m back!  Rather than continue the saga of my yuletide trip to Arizona, I’ll be diverting briefly to an overview of my family’s big trip to Disney World.

The last time I went to Disney World I was around fifteen- or sixteen-years old—it’s a bit murky—so it was over twenty years ago.  I remembered some things, naturally, but I’d forgotten quite a bit (the irony of spending four figures to visit a theme park—a video game provides more entertainment-per-hour at a far lower cost, but it’s a lonelier endeavor), so it was fun being back and experiencing Disney World anew.

It was especially fun experiencing it through the eyes of my niece and nephews, who are all old enough to appreciate the experience.

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